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Andrew Bitner
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 7478
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| Posted: 17 December 2018 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | 1
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Although I've heard often about the MLK/MX comparison, I always thought they were more FDR/Hitler. Professor X is in a wheelchair and struggling to fight hate with empathy (as well as trained mutant teenagers), while Magneto is pretty much a straight up fascist and mutant-first bigot.
It's disappointing that he'd be embraced as a Holocaust survivor, but I guess just about anything can be adopted if you squint hard enough and gloss over everything that came before. Indeed, fans do embrace what they want to embrace. Even if what they're grabbing onto is innately evil.
Edited by Andrew Bitner on 17 December 2018 at 12:28pm
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BrendanT Deneen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 11 December 2018
Posts: 40
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| Posted: 17 December 2018 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | 2
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Marvel and DC are suffocating underneath their own continuity. I would LOVE
to buy a new X-Men book but even when I buy a new #1, I generally have no
idea what's going on! What's that great line (one of JB's)? Treat every issue
like it's somebody's first. Great advice.
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Andrew W. Farago
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 July 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 4067
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| Posted: 17 December 2018 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | 3
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Cyclops has been the victim of ongoing character assassination for decades, but one good story and an editor who won't let subsequent writers undermine that one good story would do the trick. Roger Stern in Avengers and Steve Englehart then John Byrne in West Coast Avengers did a solid job of bringing Hank Pym back from the brink, but when subsequent writers portrayed him as mentally unstable and kept bringing up his worst, most out-of-character stories, readers couldn't embrace the character again.
No character's unfixable.
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Greg Kirkman
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Joined: 12 May 2006
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Posts: 15775
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| Posted: 17 December 2018 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | 4
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I'm sort of fascinated by how Claremont went so off-model on Magneto. Seems like he really did just want to give the X-Men their version of Doctor Doom.
Mutants work as a great catch-all metaphor for outcasts and minorities. Anyone can relate, on some level. Getting too specific with the metaphor leads to trouble. It's one thing to have a character who would use the precedent of the Holocaust as justification for his extreme actions so as to prevent a similar event from occurring to mutantkind. It's another to literally make that character a Holocaust survivor.
It's QUITE another thing to have that character be Magneto, who used pseudo-Nazi trappings in early stories, and would surely relate much more with Hitler and Nazi-esque notions of genetic superiority triumphing over the weak than he would with a persecuted group like the Jews.
When that gets tied in with the forced MLK/Malcolm X analogy, we get a complete warping of an established character to fit a retroactive narrative/theme.
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Andrew Bitner
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| Posted: 18 December 2018 at 8:31am | IP Logged | 5
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^ Good points
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David Miller
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Joined: 16 April 2004
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| Posted: 18 December 2018 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | 6
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The argument Lee and Kirby intended their X-Men comics as a specific civil rights metaphor requires abject ignorance of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the American civil rights movement, and the actual comics. It's appalling how little thought has gone into what's in truth offensive fanboy inanity: King was not protecting America from evil blacks, and Malcolm was not a fascist or a genocide. Saying Lee and Kirby thought so does them no credit, and places them in the company of DW Griffith through no fault of their own. When Lee and Kirby tackled social issues in their later work, it was obvious what they were going for. I wish this meme would die die die.
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Greg Kirkman
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| Posted: 18 December 2018 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | 7
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There’s an elegant simplicity to the original X-Men concept. It was designed to appeal to kids and teens who felt like outcasts. And the metaphor was broad enough to encompass just about any type of bigotry or persecution which one chose to read into it. It was most definitely there in early stories (particularly the first Sentinels story), but it wasn’t until much later that people began tying it in with the civil rights movement, perhaps as a way of adding “depth” and “relevance” which wasn’t quite there, originally.
Tying mutants directly to the Holocaust with Magneto was a mistake. And, Bryan Singer—a Gay man—clearly found his “in” with the material by troweling on the metaphor for Gayness, including a blatant coming-out-metaphor scene for Iceman (years before he was stupidly “outed” in the comics). Of course, Singer has had accusations of pedophilia flung his way (not to mention the Kevin Spacey connection), which adds a rather skeezy layer to the whole thing, in retrospect.
Anyway, specificity with something like this ends up becoming reductive, and thus shrinks the potential audience. If mutantkind becomes a specific metaphor for only Jews or only Gays, then that makes the metaphor less effective. Better to paint broad-stroke parallels than to use detail brushes.
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John Byrne
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| Posted: 18 December 2018 at 2:28pm | IP Logged | 8
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I honestly doubt Stan and Jack had ANY “metaphor” in mind in those early issues. They were having success with group books, so here was another. And keep in mind, public fear and distrust of the super folk is there right from FF1.
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Andrew Bitner
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| Posted: 18 December 2018 at 3:22pm | IP Logged | 9
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JB: And keep in mind, public fear and distrust of the super folk is there right from FF1.
***
I never thought of it that way, but it's another interesting contrast between Marvel and DC.
In Marvel's books, ordinary folks might think superheroes are dangerous and threatening, while in DC, superheroes were almost always thought of as helpful and trustworthy (until the late 60s, anyway).
Edited by Andrew Bitner on 18 December 2018 at 3:23pm
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Greg Kirkman
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| Posted: 18 December 2018 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | 10
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I honestly doubt Stan and Jack had ANY “metaphor” in mind in those early issues. They were having success with group books, so here was another. And keep in mind, public fear and distrust of the super folk is there right from FF1. +++++++++
Good point. And that seemed to be something of a holdover from all of those monster/horror/sci-fi books they’d been cranking out. The first few issues of FF have that same kind of vibe, but then the book settled into a slightly more traditional superhero mold, with the addition of costumes and headquarters, and the FF becoming celebrities (...complete with their own movie, from S-M Studios!). The “fear and distrust” aspect was subsequently played up on really well with Spider-Man, the Hulk, and the X-Men.
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Andrew Bitner
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| Posted: 18 December 2018 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | 11
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And Marvel's characters, unlike DC's, were more likely to be weird and scary.
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